We started our day by splitting up and taking six taxis to the Teruya district of Okinawa City. We then walked to the Koza X MiXtopia research center to meet with Dr. Ariko Ikehara. From there, Dr. Ikehara presented us with information about her research and the community work she does at the center. We were also given a tour of the neighborhood filled with stories about each local business and the community care happening in each space and outlines for the upcoming map being installed. It was a pleasure to speak with Dr. Ikehara and engage with her work, this day was my favorite of our entire trip.
There were two terms used and coined by Dr. Ikehara in their work that I found particularly interesting: Artchive and MiXtory. Artchive is a hybrid of archive and art, and MiXtory is a combination of mystery, history, and story.
Dr. Ikehara has been building a decolonial archive consisting of maps of local communities (with another one in the works currently). The information and data shared in the artchive come directly from community members, making the work feel deeply personal. The artchive serves to preserve their stories and cultural memory. The map outlines and draws the untold stories of the place, stressing the value of investing in these local Okinawan communities. The importance of third spaces was also brought up on this tour and some of the elements of community care happening in these spaces. These artchives often highlight the mundane and everyday stories that are often overlooked by dominant narratives that are given value. It is our personal experiences that inform our politics, and by making the personal visible it is clear that the politics for this project are rooted in a love for the community.
By centering the voices of the community rather, the artchive challenges colonial archives that steal records from and assert power over the community. The archive is decolonial, as it is treated as a subject, values different forms of knowledge production, and is continuously added to and built upon. From speaking with Dr. Ikehara, it is abundantly clear that community care is central to her practice. The way she engages with subjects felt incredibly collaborative and consensual in contrast to other ethnographic projects I have seen historically. She does not impose or assert herself as above in any way, equity between parties is centric to the practice, as she allows her interviewees to ask her anything they wish to, and does not work with people who do not wish to be her subjects. I felt quite inspired by the ethics and engagement with the subject, she demonstrates excellent care and thoughtfulness in her research.
Similar to challenging dominant narratives, embodied knowledge is uplifted in Dr. Ikehara’s work, rather than relying on solely empirical data. Dr. Ikehara’s background in performance deeply informs the work being done currently in the research center and Artchives. During our conversation, Dr. Ikehara graciously shared with us how her mixed-race identity has informed her performance art and current work. Being mixed-race, I related to the constant entitlement others feel toward knowing your identity. Through performance, Dr. Ikehara has found ways to subvert the discomfort placed on her by outsiders, by upholding a mirror to viewers of her work.
In making these works, she spoke about the importance of imagination as a tool for radically envisioning different futures. I felt quite inspired learning about Dr. Ikehara’s background in performance art. By utilizing art and repertoire as key components in her work, she is radically world-building Okinawan futures she would like to see. Dr. Ikehara stressed the importance of the possible and impossible. Written on the wall of the space is the word “possibility” which serves as a reminder to challenge what others tell you is impossible to create the futures we wish to see. We require embodied and artistic knowledge to create a future where storytelling and the soul of local Okinawan communities are prioritized. This also requires the voices of young people to listen and preserve the voices of elders. Through these types of knowledge production, we can begin to imagine a world we would like to live in.
No comments:
Post a Comment